


Day 16- Treasure Hunters

by Broken_Clover



Series: AU-gust [14]
Category: Guilty Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Persona Fusion, Magic, Other, Treasure Hunting, but i won't tag it, there's the smallest hint of sinbed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25946728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broken_Clover/pseuds/Broken_Clover
Summary: (Persona AU) Chasing after a treasure chest lands Sin and the Investigation Team into a bit of trouble
Series: AU-gust [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860388
Kudos: 9





	Day 16- Treasure Hunters

For a guy who wore an eyepatch, Sin had pretty good eyesight, at least when it came to scouting. The good new about that was he made for an excellent finder of treasure chests hidden at the end of dungeon hallways, and seeing how their ragtag ‘Investigation Team’ was made up entirely of schoolkids with shaky paychecks on the best of days, they appreciated any shiny trinkets they could sell off for healing items and weapon upgrades.

The biggest downside was that, though he was an excellent chest-finder, he wasn’t quite as good as noticing the shadows guarding it until it was too late.

“Dammit, it was guarded?” He hissed, recoiling as the dark sludge formed into a trio of Principality. 

“And they’re decently strong ones, too! But it doesn’t look like there’s a good way to evade them, we can’t run!” Said Potemkin, balling his large hands into fists. “Should we try and call the rest of the team? I’m not sure if they’re too far away to hear, but-”

“It doesn’t matter!” Elphelt shouted, pulling out Miss Travallier to shoot her card and summon Anteros. “Just don’t let your guard down!”

They didn’t have any major tricks up their sleeve, but between Potemkin’s physical skills, Elphelt’s healing spells, Ram’s fire, and his own pool of Personas on-hand, Sin couldn’t find it in him to be especially worried.

Elphelt boosted everyone’s defense with Marakukaja before taking a step back. Potemkin lunged forward to attack head-on, and Sin summoned Perseus to fire up a Mazionga. They seemed off to a strong start, with the two victims of their attacks taking a decent chunk of their health off before they could even attack. If they kept up the quick attacks, then they had a pretty good chance to make it out unscathed, right? He was feeling confident about that.

...At least until a flurry of cards tangled around Elphelt, and she suddenly collapsed to the ground like a marionette with snipped strings.

“El?!” He shouted, falling back halfway through another lightning strike. Sin dug through his pockets for a revival bead while Perseus took a thankfully nonlethal blow. “Guys, be careful! At least one of them has an instant-kill spell!”

They still had a few beads on-hand, but as soon as he felt Elphelt stir, he heard Potemkin shout in pain and felt the vibration of him collapsing. “S-shit! El! Get up! We’re taking hits!”

“I am injured.” Ramlethal’s voice managed to carry over the other sounds of the firefight, with a definite tinge of concern to her usually-neutral tone. Nike was fast, but she still struggled to dodge the attacks of three enemies all at once, all the while with Ram trying to find a revival item for Potemkin.

The three shadows managed to get lucky with instant-kill spells remarkably often, leaving the remaining members scrambling to use whatever revival items they had while avoiding more potshots, and any hits they could actually land were quickly healed.

“Dammit! My SP is almost gone! Do we have anything for that?!” Sin barked, as Perseus fired a flimsy bolt of lightning that barely nicked one of the Principality.

“I-I think Ram just drank our last coffee…” El stammered in reply, trying to revive Potemkin yet again while only hobbling by on a handful of HP, herself. “I have enough for a few more healing spells, but we’ve only got the one bead left. Are you sure we can’t run?”

At every opportunity, they had tried, only for the shadows to intercept them. He liked being an optimist, but Sin knew that things had gone horribly downhill. When he tried to conjure more electricity, all it got him in return was a hard smack that knocked his Persona to the ground.

“Shit, brace yourselves- !”

“Did someone need assistance?”

A familiar silver-and-purple gundam skated into the room, throwing up a barrier wall to catch a couple of magic blasts.

“Finally! There you are, we’ve been looking for you!” An echoing voice came from the large machine, but its mouth didn’t move. “Good think you make such a racket.”

“Bedman! About time!” Sin felt himself grinning. 

“Looks like you’re all in rough shape. Good thing I brought backup.”

The shadows were still too distracted by the new barrier to care much about the newcomers who ran into the treasure room right under their noses. Ariadne and Thalassa carried Bridget and May in their respective free arms, while Zappa ran along behind. The mechanical Persona began releasing purple smoke from its head-pipes, and a glimmering veil surrounded both it and the second half of the Investigation Team.

“Get ready for an overclock!” The echoing voice shouted. “You're buffed! May, you’re on healer duty, but just focus on knocking out those shadows!”

“Roger!” Bridget hopped off of Ariadne, and began barraging the Principality with physical attacks as soon as the barrier wall began to fragment. Zappa trailed behind with curse spells as Mania dangled over him limply. May did as instructed, throwing on a few mild healing spells, but the evasion buffs made it so it was less necessary than usual.

Following the initial difficulty, the battle swiftly shifted sides. The enemies finally burst back into piles of darkness and faded away, leaving behind nothing but a small pile of money.

“Oh, god, finally…” Sin sat on the ground and tried to catch his breath. “Nearly thought we were goners for a second.”

“Don’t run off like that next time!” May chided him. “How did you even get stuck in here in the first place, it’s a dead end!”

He pointed over his shoulder. “I saw a chest! I thought there’d be something valuable in it.”

“Well, if we cleared this room out, more shadows shouldn’t appear for a while, right?” Asked Elphelt, as she wandered toward the unattended box on a pedestal. “And since that almost got us into some hot water, it’d better be something good.”

“Yeah!” Sin managed to spring back up, following after her. “I’ve got the picks, let’s see what we got!”

Everyone else trailed behind, more than a little interested in whatever shiny trinket was so interesting that it nearly got half their team killed. Sin easily jimmied the lock open, pried the creaky lid back, and...

“Uh...looks like a cheap gemstone...and a piece of armor we already have.”

A collective groan went through the group, plus a few muffled curses and less-than-polite gestures. Sin still pocketed the small gem, but he was in the same boat as the rest of them. “Well, I guess you win some, you lose some. Let’s head back to the safe room to take a break. Bedman, think you can carry Pot? I don’t think we’ll have any luck trying it ourselves.”

The mecha nodded, scooping the unconscious man up like a sack of potatoes. “Everyone can hop on if they don’t feel like walking.”

A few took him up on the offer, and they all headed back. Maybe it was just imaginary, but the safe room felt far warmer and cozier than the rest of the dungeon. At least they knew no more shadows would be popping out to take them by surprise.

“Must be nice having a Persona you can ride in, Bedman.” Bridget said, sliding off the machine’s arm. “Ariadne can barely carry me!”

“Morpheus is remarkably comfortable on the inside, though I can admit it was frightening the first time I was dragged into him. For all I knew, he could have been trying to eat me.”

“I’ve got sandwiches!” Zappa chirped, hoisting up a makeshift lunchbox for everyone to see. “The boss lets me take the ready-made ones once they’re passed the sell-by date, but I promise they’re still good!”

“Ah, damn, that sounds _perfect_ right now.” Sin went up to grab half of a turkey sandwich and begin munching on it. 

After being revived, Potemkin found a place to sit near his much smaller leader. “I’m glad you were able to figure something out in the end. But next time, let’s be more careful. Treasure rooms are often more dangerous than one would expect.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right.” Replied Sin, between bites of sandwich. “How’s Kratos?”

“Perfectly fine, I just don’t summon him unless I need him.” Potemkin reached across the table to pull out an egg sandwich, which looked positively miniscule in his large hands. “I’m not sure why you leave yours out so much when we aren’t in battle.”

Sin tilted his head. “Huh? What do you mean? He isn’t out now.”

The man gave him an odd look back. “What do you mean? He’s up there.”

When he looked up to where Potemkin was pointing, Sin was surprised to see that he was right. Perseus hadn’t dissipated, instead he sat on Morpheus’s shoulder, apparently perfectly comfortable where he was. He’d never realized how large Morpheus was, especially odd considering the respective sizes of their owners, but there was plenty of space for his Persona to sit and relax on his teammate.

“Huh?” The girls seemed to notice his staring. “What’s Perseus doing…?”

“I dunno, El. I didn’t make him do that.” He shrugged back. “Why does it even matter?”

“Hmm…” Despite herself, Elphelt had to side-eye the rather affectionate way Perseus cuddled up on his teammate, wrapping an arm around one of his pipe-horns. Hey, weren’t Personas supposed to be a manifestation of their owners...? “Hey, Sin, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, what?”

“Do you...have a crush on anyone?”

Sin balked. “The heck? What does that have to do with anything? What made you ask?”

Behind him, Perseus’ gloved hand stroked Morpheus’ sleek metal head, before he went back to cuddling his horn.

Elphelt glanced away, resisting the urge to blush. “No reason. Just wondering.”


End file.
